The problem with the problem of inequality

We don't decide to become a progressive or conservative - we discover we already are.

We spend so much time and energy debating the raw facts of inequality with our political opponents when our real disagreement is over worldviews: put simply, is the world meritocratic or not? Tim Dean writes.

Inequality is a trendy issue with rock star economists, but many on the conservative side of politics simply don't acknowledge it as being a problem.

Unlike children, economists are traditionally heard but not seen. But not these days. In recent times, we've had the unlikely spectacle of a book by a French economist proving a persistent best seller in the United States. And only a few nights ago we had Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz performing live (playing PowerPoint rather than a Gibson Les Paul) in front of a thrumming crowd in Sydney's Town Hall. It's a wonder there wasn't any crowd surfing.

Welcome to the era of the rock star economist.

The message that has brought economics to the masses is a simple one: the rise of inequality. Not only is inequality on the up in the US, it's rising here too: the last couple of decades have seen the gap between rich and poor widen, and if things don't change, this trend is likely to continue.

Piketty and Stiglitz have also emphasised that inequality is a Bad Thing: it concentrates and entrenches wealth within a minority; it stifles economic growth; it corrupts politics; it exacerbates other social injustices; and it makes a mockery of the American (and Australian) dream that if you work hard enough, you will find success.

Yet even with superstar economists pumping out bestselling books and preaching to adoring crowds that nod along with every graph, there is very little happening on the political front to address the underlying forces that are contributing to rising inequality.

Why?

Before we start blaming politicians, we should remember that battling inequality will likely require a great deal of deep structural changes to our political and economic systems. Those changes will be politically costly, particularly because they will, by definition, be working against the interests of those who currently enjoy the fruits of the existing paradigm.

If politicians are going to butt heads with the holders of capital, they'll need a wealth of political capital to do so. And that'll need to come from overwhelming popular support.

Yet even when there has been a popular outburst of concern about inequality, such as with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it has gone nowhere. The most memorable news story from OWS was protesters being saturated by a fairly egalitarian application of pepper spray.

The problem is that only one side of politics is getting agitated about inequality. To those on the Left, inequality is obviously a Bad Thing. So they buy books and attend concerts - um, talks - by economists, and they bang on about progressive taxation, death duties, a strong social safety net and a "fair go" for all.

But it often falls on the deaf ears of the Right, many of whom might well acknowledge that inequality is on the rise, but who just don't buy that this is such a Bad Thing. To them, all those progressive policies to combat inequality sound not only unconvincing, but maybe even a bit hysterical.

The reason for this disconnect in views - and the corresponding disconnect in political discourse - is because those predisposed towards the Left and the Right tend to have significantly different moral world views, and these world views flavour the inequality debate before it even gets started.

One key difference between world views is whether we see the world as a meritocracy. In a meritocracy, you get what you deserve: if you work hard, you will be rewarded with success, and you'll have deserved it; if you skive off, you deserve to fail. On the flip side: if you are successful, you must have worked hard; and if you're a failure, then you mustn't have tried very hard.

You know: "lifters and leaners."

In a non-meritocratic world, you don't necessarily deserve everything you get. If you're rich, you didn't solely earn your wealth, but were lucky enough to be born into good socioeconomic circumstances, get a good education and benefit from the entire social and political framework.

Conversely, you might (to paraphrase Fred Savage's dad in The Wonder Years) get up at 5am, fight traffic, bust your hump all day, fight traffic again, come home, then pay your taxes, and you still might not get rich. From this perspective, success and wealth are somewhat arbitrarily distributed, and are the product of hard work plus a considerable dose of external factors and plain good luck.

You can probably already see the seeds of progressivism and conservatism in these two worldviews, and see how they might influence attitudes on inequality. For, if we live in a meritocracy, it's only fair that those who have worked hard get to enjoy the fruits of their labour, while those who are lazy need to learn to pull their weight. Coddling them with welfare is only exacerbating the problem. Ayn Rand is probably the most extreme, if not the most charming, proponent of this particular political view.

On the other hand, if we really do live in a non-meritocratic world, then inequality will often be the product of external or random factors. Thus it's only fair that the lucky give a portion of their wealth to the unlucky to give them a leg up.

These world views flavour the way we see the world well before we even form any political attitudes. Arguably, it's our tendency to see the world in one of these two ways that predisposes us towards one side of politics or the other; we don't tend to decide to become a progressive or a conservative, we discover we already are one.

The problem is that when we debate policy we often take our worldview for granted, and forget that our political opponents see the world in a fundamentally different way. So it often seems to us that the other side of politics is simply batshit crazy. Their policies seem totally irrational or even cruel given the way we see the world, yet no matter how much we argue about how wrong their policies are, it never seems to cut through. So we talk (or shout) across each other, on inequality and just about everything else.

Thus the bold facts about inequality, as made abundantly clear by the rock stars of economics, just don't move enough people on the Right to encourage politicians to take notice.

What to do? It's actually quite simple. Before we debate what to do about inequality, we should start another debate about what kind of world we live in. Is the world really meritocratic or not?

Studies have shown that when people of any political persuasion are presented with a hypothetical meritocratic world, they naturally recommend conservative policies. And if they're presented with a hypothetical non-meritocratic world, they suggest progressive policies. Yet if they're presented with a hypothetical world where it's ambiguous as to whether it's meritocratic or not, they fall back on their default moral worldview.

This suggests that if we can only figure out what the world is really like, then political attitudes on inequality and other matters will naturally galvanise around the most appropriate responses for the real world.

So is the world meritocratic or not? I have my views, but that's a debate for another day. Hopefully a day in the near future. The important thing is that we realise that it's a debate we need to have before we can properly acknowledge, let alone tackle, the problem of inequality.

Tim Dean is a science and philosophy writer. He is currently completing a PhD in evolution and morality at the University of New South Wales. You can follow him at @ockhamsbeard. View his full profile here.